Posts Tagged ‘MacBook’

When you want to show something on screen to many people, having a 12″ iBook might not be ideal. But there is a way around this shortcoming : using an Apple AV Cable, you can use your computer to show your screen on a TV (some other Mac portables have this option as well). This helped me when I wanted to show pictures to my family using iPhoto. But I also wanted to give titles to those pictures, and make sure names and places would be written correctly, so I asked my aunt to proofread as I wrote. Given the poor resolution of the TV, it was impossible for her to read, but using screen zooming, I managed to make it possible. Using two key sequences, I was able to zoom in to the rename box in iPhoto, and zoom back to full screen where our pictures were displayed as big as possible (filling the photo frame in iPhoto).

I’ll introduce key concepts to Screen zooming as well as the new options that appeared in Panther.

Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we could read on the computer screen as easily as in a book, using the full screen to display our pages and holding the computer vertically like a book. Well, with a iBook (or MacBook) and Preview, we can !

New in Panther is the feature to display a PDF document in full screen. And a PDF document on OS X mean any kind of document, since you can create a PDF out of any application using the Print command (and Preview). Plus, many manuals, technical books and tutorials are already PDF documents.

In Preview, you first need to rotate the document. You can do this using Rotate Left under Show menu (this option is under the Tools menu in rencent versions of Preview). Then choose Full Screen under the same menu (or Slideshow under the View menu in recent versions). To move from page to page, you can use the Up and Down arrows, or just click the Trackpad to get to the next page. Remember to press Escape to exit the full screen mode

Want something that will look more like printed paper and will be easier for the eyes ? Using System Preferences, you can add a calibration for your monitor that will make you screen look just perfect for reading. Go in the Display preferences, choose the Color tab, and click the Calibrate button. You can make the Expert Mode active (extra option at the bottom of the screen) to adjust your monitor colors precisely, but for a quick setting, let this option off. Click Continue twice (you’ll want to leave the first panel as it is) and choose D50 on the Select target white point panel. This will turn you screen in a warm yellowish white that is easier for the eyes, especially for reading. Click Continue, and name your profile to something like “reading”. You’ll be able to switch back to this profile or choose another profile from the Display preference panel in the future.

Notice that you can interrupt your reading session at any time and go to another application by using Command-Tab or Exposé. When doing late readings on my computer using this method, I sometimes find myself grabbing the right corner of the screen and trying to turn the page ! It feels just like a book !